


DOWNLOAD 98 % COMPLETE

by punkdentist



Series: space au [1]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Aliens, Alternate Universe - Space, Artificial Intelligence, Friendship, Gen, Nonbinary Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-27
Updated: 2016-02-27
Packaged: 2018-05-17 06:57:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5858803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punkdentist/pseuds/punkdentist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After (accidentally) kidnapping a pink alien and being chased by people with laser pistols, Zoro wants to leave this planet behind him forever, but Nami, the AI and pilot of their spaceship, has other plans. Nothing is ever easy in space.</p>
            </blockquote>





	DOWNLOAD 98 % COMPLETE

Zoro tore the spaceship's main entrance open and jumped in dragging the unconscious and squishy alien behind him. He kicked the door shut and crawled forward. As always, he bumped his head on the low-hanging pipe. He groaned in pain. The alien had it worse. They were being manhandled through the narrow corridor and slammed into the walls multiple times. The floor ended in a steep slope. Zoro slid down to the command room and hit the floor with practise. The alien fell down after him. Zoro paused and looked down when he heard the loud bang. He felt sorry for the guy, and a little guilty, since many the bruises they would have tomorrow would be Zoro's fault, but there was no time to be gentle.

"Start the launch sequence, Nami, and skip the safety protocols while you're at it. We need off this planet right fucking now!" Zoro shouted.

"I am afraid that is not possible at the moment." Nami said in her robotic staccato voice.

Zoro froze midway through trying to strap the alien in to a seat, which was a challenge since their pink skin kept sticking to his fingers like chewing gum. No matter how much he tightened the seatbelt, it would not stay on. The alien's flesh simply went somewhere else, overflowing and stretching. They almost fell out of the seat.

"What do you mean we can't launch?" Zoro finally managed to grit out.

"Well, it is kind of a funny story." Nami said in a way that would have been apologetic if her voice box had allowed settings like that.

Zoro turned his head to stare menacingly into one of the many cameras that Nami saw through. He did not blink once.

"You know how I want to buy a voice module that match my gender and personality, but I cannot since we are perpetually broke because you spend too much on non-essentials like alcohol and soap and that new oxygen filter, even though the old one was barely broken and only made you cough and struggle to breathe sometimes. See, I found a wi-fi hotspot nearby, so I went online to read the news and such. Then I stumbled upon an open-source software for a female voice, and I started downloading because I thought I would have enough time to finish since I was not counting on you storming in here and demanding take-off, which means that technically this is your fault and -!" Nami explained hastily.

"Whatever! Just get us off the ground as fast as possible." Zoro interrupted.

"I will. The download is 98 % complete, so at this point it would take longer to shut it down than to wait it out." Nami said.

Zoro kicked the chair as an answer then went back to working on strapping in the stranger. He had not even gotten their name. One minute he had been walking down the street minding his own business, then people had been shooting at him with lasers, and the guy had thrown  themself in between, absorbed the full hit and passed out. Zoro had grabbed the alien and started running, not pausing to ask questions. Luckily his less than stellar sense of directions made him apt at shaking off pursuers since the routes he picked were illogical and sometimes even dangerous. Zoro had eventually made it back by following the directions of an old gps he wore as a wristwatch that Nami had once hacked to always display the simplest way to the ship.

"Download 99 % complete." Nami said.

Zoro groaned. He was pretty sure he had not been followed back, but it did not take a genius to figure out that he would head to his spaceship, and he had no idea who the people shooting were. To make matters worse the town was not a big one and therefore only had one docking station. The sooner they got away the better. He needed to occupy himself. 

He grabbed what looked to be the alien's leg and twisted it round the chair three times. He wondered far they could stretch. If there was an upper limit, it was not reached yet. Zoro wound the leg around the seat a fourth time with no difficulties. He rushed to tie a knot with the guy's own leg. His fingers slipped on the sticky skin, and he lost his grasp. The leg unrolled itself almost completely, before Zoro grabbed it. He looped it around the seat once more and slowly tied the knot. This time everything held. He repeated the process with all the other limbs and loose bits then rebuckled the alien and double-checked all the straps. The pink skin stuck to his fingers as he pulled them away. It snapped back with a thwang. Zoro winced and hoped none of his actions would cause lasting harm. The guy had already gotten knocked unconscious for him, even if Zoro still had no clue why.

As there was nothing useful left to do, Zoro began pacing. His heavy boots clanked loudly against the metal floor. The air was hot to breathe. Nami had diverted all power from the cooling systems to fasten the download. Zoro had worked up a sweat running through half the city while carrying someone, and the ship's climate did not help him cool down. He pulled off his sweat-drenched t-shirt and crumpled it in his hand. He clenched his fist so tightly around it that the knuckles turned white. His quarters were just through the hatch. There he could change into an identical, but dry, white shirt. Zoro took the first step forward. 

"Download complete. Assimilating new software." Nami said still in her old voice. "Take-off sequence initiated."

"Oh thank god!" Zoro said. He heard the rocket engines roaring to life and smiled.

"I thought you were and atheist." Nami said sarcastically. She laughed, delighted at her ability to express it. "Buckle up, Zoro! I'm taking us out of here in 4..3..2..1..!"

Zoro barely made it to his seat. He fastened the belt tightly. The rough straps bit into his bare skin. The ship shot upwards in a graceful curve. Nami piloted with ease and skill. In no time they had broken through the atmosphere. The lump in his throat dissolved, and he breathed easily once more. The vast blackness of outer space always had this effect on Zoro. For a while everything was blissful calm. Then the alien woke up.

"Hey, it's you, thanks for saving me! Did we get away from those gun people? I guess we did since we're in space. I'm Luffy by the way, who are you?" They said looking everywhere at once before fixating on Zoro who said nothing.

"I'm Nami. The asshole too stunned to speak over there is Zoro." Nami said. "Go put a shirt on, Zoro. Come one!"

Zoro scoffed at her and shuffled, reluctantly, to his room. He grabbed some InstaClean GelShowertm from the drawer and slathered it all over his chest and back. It stung a little as it dried and left itching red patches on his brown skin. This was probably because it was more than a year past the expiration date, but it had been cheap, and the stuff sort of worked most of the time. He certainly smelled sharply of citrus after using it. Zoro rarely cared enough about his personal hygiene to be bothered by this. Now, however, there was another person with a functioning nose aboard. He made plans to ask Nami later to heat some water for a shower, but at the moment he needed to go untangle Luffy's limbs from each other.

Worrying about his appearance was no use, so Zoro simply grabbed a shirt and pulled it on. He walked to the command room in five big steps. Luffy sat where he left them, completely enthralled in the story Nami was telling. She was recounting one of their more daring escapes from the Justice Corps. Zoro did not want to interrupt, and he had nothing to say. No words seemed to encompass:  _Thanks for taking a laser bullet for me even though it was probably your fault they were shooting at me in the first place, and also sorry for (kind of) kidnapping you and tying you to a chair._ Instead Zoro grabbed Luffy's leg and began the untangling. They were being remarkably chill about the whole thing. They rambled about space adventures, gesticulated wilder and wilder as Zoro worked more of their limbs loose. Luffy giggled every time he touched their feet. Zoro smiled too, as he filed away their ticklishness for future reference. 

The second he undid the last buckle, Luffy sprang into action. In under five minutes they managed to put their sticky fingerprints on every single interesting thing in the room. Zoro raised an eyebrow, quietly impressed. Nami beeped in annoyance when they ran their hands over the huge custom-built control panel, misaligning cords and disturbing levers. Luffy pushed nothing crucial out of order, but Zoro still went to move it all back knowing how Nami liked it. Having looked at all the exciting stuff, Luffy left to explore the rest of the spaceship.

"Sure, you can take a look around. Thanks for asking for permission, first!" Nami called out after them.

Zoro snorted. He pulled down a fold-out couch and settled down. Outside stars shot by at a dizzying speed. 

"It's kinda funny that you like them. You're not easily charmed." Zoro said.

"Who, Luffy? What are you talking about? I don't. Seriously! I'm a cold, rational Artificial Intelligence. I don't have feelings, and I certainly don't like people, so shut up." Nami said, speeding up her voice.

"If you say so ... softie" Zoro teased.

Nami beeped and hissed in response. Then she turned off the heat. Goosebumps rose on his bare arms. Zoro shivered and rubbed them viciously.

"Come on, don't be like that." He said. "It's just that you're usually a good judge of character, and I wanna know if they're trustworthy. If something happened to the ship, to you, because of them, then it would be my fault and ..."

Somewhat touched by Zoro's words, though she would never admit it, Nami turned up the heat again. 

"Relax it'll be fine probably. For what it's worth, Luffy has picked up no blunt objects to bludgeon you with on their rampage. They are mostly interested in food." Nami said.

Zoro nodded and leaned back. He kicked off his boots and moved around, trying to find a position where no sharp edges dug into his back. He really wanted to take a nap. Maybe it was foolish to sleep with a stranger around, but Zoro was pretty sure he could beat them in hand-to-hand combat, and Nami was monitoring to make sure they did not mess up things, by accident or on purpose. Confident in their combined abilities, he decided to go for it. He stretched and closed his eyes, half-asleep already. For some reason he slept best on a moving spaceship with the engine hum as a constant background noise.

As he was drifting to sleep, Luffy stormed in. Zoro blinked groggily and looked up. They were holding a tray stacked with food. He noticed the fresh fruit he had gotten earlier from the market, bananas and plums, a pitcher filled to the brim with mysterious chunky liquid, nuts and dried figs in vacuum-packed plastic bags, four eggs, freshly boiled, and more stuff that he neither knew what was nor remembered buying.

"Hey, so I was really hungry so I took some food, but I couldn't decide, and I thought maybe you were hungry too, so I just brought a bunch that looked good. Here, I made you a smoothie!" Luffy said and poured him a glass of reddish-brown liquid from the pitcher.

"What flavour is this?" Zoro asked shakily after taking a sip.

"Meat!" Luffy answered and smiled. "Do you like it?"

"It's ... unique." Zoro answered.

The three of them chatted while Zoro and Luffy ate. They giggled and fought over who got to eat the last peanut or jelly square. Luffy won most of these battles with their long and stretchy arms. Zoro complained, mostly because he could. He did not really care. Luffy drank three cups of meat flavoured smoothie. They pestered and nagged Zoro, until he eventually finished his single glass. He had to admit that while it was not good, it did not taste awful either. The after-taste made him nauseous. Nami laughed at this, and Luffy vowed to do better. From now on they would make Zoro a smoothie every day till they had perfected the recipe. Zoro groaned, and Nami laughed even harder. Two screens flickered, and several lights on the control panel blinked on and off. 

"Glad to hear you're enjoying the new voice." Zoro said and stared straight into one of Nami's cameras.

"You didn't always sound like this?" Luffy asked.

"Nah, I used to have this boring computer voice box, but now I can laugh and yell and sing, it's fantastic!" Nami said. She had always enjoyed talking but after the update it was all she wanted to do.

Luffy nodded solemnly at this then broke into a huge smile.

"So what are you exactly?" Zoro asked.

"Zoro, you can't just ask that! But seriously what are you because I can't find your species in any of my databases. " Nami said.

"I don't know actually." Luffy said and laughed. "Gramps and my brothers don't look like me at all, and I never met my parents. Does it matter?"

"Not really." Nami said. Zoro shrugged.

"What are you then?" Luffy asked.

"Me?" Zoro asked surprised.

"Yeah, I know what the robot lady is ..." Luffy said. "A robot."

"Artificial Intelligence and/or spaceship!" Nami chimed in.

"Whatever, I wanna know the kind of alien he is." Luffy said and smiled.

"I'm 100 % human." Zoro protested.

"Are you sure? I know a lot about humans, since I was raised by one, and I've never heard of a human with green hair before who wasn't at least half something else. Maybe you're some kind of hybrid and just don't know it?" Luffy said. They folded their arms to look extra serious and looked Zoro straight in the eye.

"Um, when I was a kid ..." Zoro said after a pause. "My friend, she dared me to eat this mysterious plant, and well, my hair's looked like this ever since."

"Oh, oh, oh my god! Serious, are you, serious, are you, god? That's really ridi, really ridi, ridiculous really." Nami said, laughing so much that her voice glitched and stuttered.

Zoro kicked one of her processors, but it only made her laugh harder. He sighed. He already regretted sharing that. Nami would bug him about it forever. 

"Man, you guys are fun. I'm really glad I ended up on this ship even if it was an accident." Luffy said and smiled.

"Yeah, we are too." Zoro said. Nami beeped in agreement.

**Author's Note:**

> The childhood friend Zoro mentions is Kuina who is very much alive and off having her own space adventures.


End file.
